Data: Your Most Ignored And Valuable Asset

Michael Rose

(Forbes Agency Council)Are you ready for a data-driven sales and marketing program? Identifying the right business development data for both account-based and inbound marketing is critical. This data will be used to build your audiences — specifically, your buyer personas and target accounts. We often think of acquiring data about our prospects through form fills, CRM contact fields or purchasing lists. Your data collection, maintenance and hygiene strategy are becoming an increasingly important factor when aligning sales and marketing to knock your sales goals out of the ballpark.

No longer does marketing simply hand over a lead to sales — they hand over business development intelligence. It also helps when departments share data across various platforms. For example, accounting has information

to run upsell and cross-sell campaigns. The proper use of your database allows you to think more strategically about your accounts and audience. When your database hygiene is kept to impeccable standards, it enables your marketing, sales and customer service teams to create more responsible audience engagement.

It’s important to understand the different types of data you have at your fingertips, how to maintain your database and, finally, how your teams can share this information. Sharing data between departments is always encouraged before going outside the company.  

First-Party Data

This is the data you own -- what you use to engage with leads, create brand loyal customers, track movement through your sales pipeline and in countless other tactics. This is often acquired by opt-in form fills on your site or by your sales team through the sales process, networking, events, etc. Your business has been doing this for years, and each day is a step closer to collecting the right information to provide the best brand experience possible for your audience.

Static websites are dead. Dynamic websites are winning in acquiring new customers and retaining and growing existing ones. But without the proper account and contact data, dynamic websites are a waste of time and money. It’s like racing a Ferrari with cheap gas in the tank. 

You will constantly need to append your database to fill in the gaps that are missing in your account and contact records for engaged leads. Using smart forms to help fill missing information is one way to do so, but sometimes you'll need to do some research to help fill in the gaps. Let’s say that you are missing a critical piece of information in a contact record, such as the contact’s job title. Somehow, through all of your data collection points, this field was left empty. And it's preventing the contact from moving to the next stage of the marketing and sales process. If your automated marketing and sales process is set up properly, when you append this contact record, it will move this contact closer to an opportunity and ultimately create new business for your company.

First-party data is proprietary. Never share your data if you’ve made the promise not to do so. 

Second-Party Data

This is becoming a hot topic in the marketing world. This data originates directly from the source but someone else owns it and may be using it in similar ways as you. If you have a partner with a similar target account list and they are willing (and able) to share, you both can add your data to fill the gaps to proceed with your marketing programs. This is always the trickiest kind of data to use; you need to consider what kind of data you are getting and how you can use it. Some second-party data will be best used for gaining strategic insights and some won't be usable for outreach. One strategy we've used is creating co-branded emails sent from a partner's email account, inviting contacts to relevant thought-leadership events to create new leads for both parties.

Sometimes, second-party is not an option, but it’s always worth considering.

 Third-Party Data

Third-party data is generated from many different types of platforms. This is an outside list, so be careful to understand exactly how the data is collected. It can hurt your reputation and increase your chances of email communications going right to spam. Use third-party data to help support your first-party data and give a complete picture that can be used for fueling both your inbound and account-based marketing campaigns.

Data is becoming an asset of its own; if you are not taking care of your database, you are throwing away value and a return on many investments. You need to create a meaningful and useful database, or else you are poisoning one of your most valuable resources. No level of marketing strategy or sales process can compensate for having a poor data maintenance plan. 

One of the most common worries I hear is that a company's existing CRM database is no longer accurate. To fix this, create a plan using these three steps: identify, plan and implement. Identify what information you are missing or is inaccurate. Create a plan for repairing your database using smart forms, workflows, third- or second-party data and research. Focus on how to repair the current issues and setting up your strategy to avoid any future problems. Finally, begin implementation. Assign responsibility for each step in your plan, remove any inaccurate data that could impact a dynamic web experience or personalized email, and continue with your plan. These steps also work when updating your database. Recently, we used automated workflows to get a better understanding of the pains of our contacts, which has allowed us to better segment our lists and provide content much more relevant to their needs. 

Once your database is accurate, the fun can really begin. Timely and accurate data can be used to build models for ideal customer profiles and decision-making buyer personas within your current database. Properly appended, segmented data can be used for highly personalized marketing efforts to your audience. With the right marketing strategy, you can build your audience models based on past purchasing behaviors.

Michael Rose is the founder of Mojo Media Labs, an award-winning strategic inbound sales and marketing agency, and Return on Energy Inc.